Maintenance regimes for systems and equipment can be scheduled and carried out in many conventional ways, for example specific selected maintenance actions such as replacing or testing a component of a vehicle can be carried out at fixed time intervals or fixed operational time intervals.
For complex and/or safety-critical systems, for example passenger aircraft and military aircraft, it is known to use a systematic, “holistic” maintenance approach known as reliability centred maintenance (RCM). Although in one sense any maintenance can be considered as improving reliability, it will be appreciated by the person skilled in the art of maintenance of complex and/or safety-critical systems that the terminology “reliability centred maintenance” defines specific types of recognised large scale preventive maintenance processes. Examples of recognised RCM processes are “Operator/Manufacturer Scheduled Maintenance Development—MSG-3” (published by the Air Transport Association of America, Inc. (ATA)) and “Procedures for Developing Preventive Maintenance—AP100C-22” (published by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and available from the Defence Storage and Distribution Centre (DSDC), LLangennech, UK). Conventionally, a bespoke RCM program or plan is produced for a specific aircraft type/scenario combination, where the scenario may be, for example, one or more of intended deployment mode, specification of variable parameters/components of the aircraft, customer identity, and so on. Preventive maintenance actions, such as replacing or testing a component of the aircraft, are then selected according to the RCM output and carried out at times and/or to extents determined by the output of the RCM program.
It is known to provide software that implements or controls some or all of the RCM. This software, or other forms of implementation, and its operation, may be known as an RCM toolset.
Parts of the RCM process are carried out and/or managed by human operators. Control of the operation of the human operator in their efforts to implement processes as part of RCM may be known as governance. In respective application areas, e.g. one being for civil aircraft, a different one being for military aircraft, corresponding respective governance arrangements are either specified as part of RCM or have become common practice when implementing RCM in that particular respective application area. Hence, for example, conventionally governance for RCM for military aircraft is considered to be completely different to, and incompatible with, governance for RCM for civil aircraft, and also completely different to, and incompatible with, governance for other industries such as the oil industry, nuclear industry, and so on.